Roundup (With Frequent Lyrical Interludes)

The Internet is set to overtake television as the largest medium by 2010. Which makes me wonder why the NBCC doesn’t form a strategic alliance, Survivor-style, with the television medium to take out all these online upstarts who are apparently responsible for the crisis in book reviewing. A few strategically thrown grenades and Ciabattari and Freeman can take out Newton, Esposito, Asher, and that obnoxious Ed Champion guy in a few hours. Terrorism, you say? Not at all. This is the only way to resolve a crisis.

Was Robert Altman’s Popeyeunfairly maligned? (And for what it’s worth, I like Popeye. Not the least or the greatest film, but enjoyable on its own merits. If you want to talk nadir of Altman’s career, try Ready to Wear.)

The 1950s issues of Playboy will be released as a DVD archive on November 2. Persona Non Data talks with Bondi Digital Publishing about how this happened. Bondi is also responsible for the New Yorker DVD-ROMs. Hopefully, they have improved the clunky interface.

I wasn’t able to make it to last night’s panel, for I had a far more important conversation to participate in. But Levi has a report on the seventieth discussion this month on the crisis in book reviewing. For what it’s worth, I don’t believe you’ll be finding a lot of serious criticism in the NYTBR so long as a humorless and condescending tool like Sam Tanenhaus is editor.

I used to say that you could build a philosophy based on lines from only two sources: The Godfather trilogy and Seinfeld (mostly the middle four years). Recently, I added Popeye (the old cartoon show).